Couples Are Forced Into Plan B After Fires and Hurricanes

After sweeping fires threatened their Sonoma wedding, Ella McCallion and Jasper Smith opted for a family-only ceremony at San Francisco’s City Hall on Friday, Oct. 13.CreditCostin Pirvu

By Lauren Sloss and Brooke Lea Foster

Oct. 19, 2017

Ella McCallion woke up at 2 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 10 when she smelled smoke.

Ms. McCallion and her then-fiancé, Jasper Smith, both 27 and from Portland, Ore., were staying at a friend’s property in Sonoma, Calif., where they were planning to host 100 of their friends and family that coming Saturday. After a day of preparations, they fell into a fitful sleep to the sound of loud, gusting winds. Until Ms. McCallion woke up. She quickly shook Mr. Smith awake and looked out the window: Due east, the hills were glowing orange.

Ms. McCallion was witnessing the beginning of the record-breaking wildfires that have torn through California’s wine country over the last week and a half. As of Monday, at least 5,700 buildings have been destroyed, and 41 people have died. And 40,000 people had been evacuated.

Planning a destination wedding is stressful enough, but having your nuptials disrupted by a rare weather event, whether it be an earthquake, hurricane, flood or wildfires, can wreak havoc on the most well-laid plans — even for couples whose weddings are several weeks (or months) away.

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Instead of a grill-cooked, family-style dinner in Sonoma, the couple embraced their new San Francisco destination and opted for oysters and champagne in a nearby park after the ceremony.CreditNicholas Stone Schearer

Ms. McCallion, a buyer at MARCH, a kitchen- and pantry-ware store, and Mr. Smith, whose wedding was only four days away, had hoped that they could stick with their original plans, even as they drove south toward San Francisco. Their wedding night was to include a grill-cooked, family-style dinner and a jazz band that would play “Sway” for their first dance.

“We hoped that, within a day, things would be smoky and unpleasant but O.K.,” said Mr. Smith, the owner of Son of Man Cider, a cidery in Cascade Locks, Ore.

It wasn’t.

Knowing when to make the call to change, or cancel ceremonies, was just one of the tough decisions these couples and others have had to make over the last several weeks as unpredictable wildfires and hurricanes caused disruptions to their best-laid plans.

Mr. Smith and Ms. McCallion were quick to praise their original venues and vendors, which have offered full refunds, nearly across the board. And they are keeping their troubles in perspective.

“People are losing their homes. We have 100 people who are traveling to celebrate us,” Mr. Smith said. “We’re not doing so badly.”

Putting together a backup plan helped: Mr. Smith and Ms. McCallion showed off their favorite parts of San Francisco, while still capturing the dinner party spirit of their original wedding. The two had a family-only ceremony at San Francisco’s City Hall on Friday, Oct. 13 (“Married on Friday the 13th, under a blood-red sun!” Mr. Smith wryly noted), followed by oysters and champagne at Land’s End, a city park with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Guests then gathered at their new reception hall — a private room at Hong Kong Lounge, a lauded dim sum restaurant and a favorite of the couple’s when they lived in San Francisco. Mr. Smith, arm around his bride, toasted his guests: “You all made our Plan B feel like a Plan A.” The couple and their guests then moved down the street to Trad’r Sam, where the jukebox loudly played “Sway” as the bride and groom held each other close.

A Hurricane Moves In

Suits were pressed, the cake topper packed and all was a go for Bill Siegfried’s and his partner, Greg Stockbridge’s, Aug. 26 destination wedding. The New York couple planned to board a Carnival cruise ship docked in Galveston, Tex., say their vows before about 90 guests, and surprise everyone with a flash mob dance to Styx’s “Come Sail Away With Me,” before cutting the cake and setting sail with their closest family and friends to Cozumel, Belize and the Honduras. A rehearsal dinner in Mr. Siegfried’s hometown Sugar Land was set for Friday.

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Bill Siegfried, left, secured the restaurant and Greg Stockbridge found the flowers after their plans to wed on a Carnival cruise ship were interrupted by Hurricane Harvey. Mr. Stockbridge’s sister officiated.

But an unexpected guest crashed their wedding: A Category 4 hurricane.

As Hurricane Harvey swirled closer to the Texas coast at the end of August, Mr. Siegfried, a 40-year-old program director for Hearst, and his fiancé, a 43-year-old personal trainer and group fitness instructor for the Y.M.C.A., grew uneasy. From their Sugar Land hotel room the day before the wedding, they watched as airlines canceled flights and weather predictions grew dire. “That morning, Greg looked up from the news coverage and said, ‘We need a Plan B’,” Mr. Siegfried said.

“We didn’t have time to get upset — we just went into attack mode,” Mr. Siegfried said. He worked on securing space for the wedding at a Brazilian restaurant they had considered for the rehearsal dinner, which had a large enough space to accommodate guests already in town. Mr. Stockbridge bought up the roses, gladiolas and any other pink or purple flower he could find at the grocery store, mobbed with people buying canned food and water. A friend hunted down a two-tiered wedding cake. And by five o’clock, with Mr. Stockbridge’s sister officiating, they were exchanging vows, toasting their marriage and dancing the flash mob before 49 guests, as the first gusts of wind and rain arrived.

Extensive damage caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which devastated several islands in the Caribbean, has forced numerous brides and grooms to rethink their weddings that were scheduled into the winter months. Some resorts on the islands of Anguilla, St. Barth’s, St. Maarten and St. Thomas will remain closed through December, maybe later, to complete repairs.

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A flash-mob went on as planned, only instead of on a cruise bound for the Caribbean, wedding guests took over a Brazilian restaurant in Sugar Land, Tex.

“Even the couples who think of everything can’t prepare for this level of stress,” said Joann Gregoli, a New York-based destination weddings planner who started a Facebook page called Hurricane Irma Crashed My Wedding to help brides and grooms replan their big day at no charge. That so many couples choose hurricane season to have their wedding may be surprising, even if it’s often highly discouraged in the Caribbean, said Teresa Brunner, a wedding planner with Tropical Destination Management in the Turks and Caicos. But a fall wedding has become fashionable. According to an annual survey of 13,000 brides and grooms by the wedding website the Knot, September and October are the most popular months to get married, even more so than June, which has been the traditional favorite.

Ms. Gregoli says she and her clients were glued to the Weather Channel as recent hurricanes passed over the Caribbean islands. A few brides with upcoming weddings called her in tears. “When I saw the second storm, I just kept thinking, ‘This can’t be happening,’ ” Ms. Gregoli said.

Leaving Minnesota for White Sands

Brittany Christian and her fiancé, Marcus Benedict, weren’t sure if their Sept. 30 wedding would go on in the Turks and Caicos until the day before they were set to board a flight to the ceremony. When the Minneapolis couple booked their destination wedding at Beaches Turks & Caicos Resort Villages & Spa last year, they knew they set the date during hurricane season, but enticed by the promise of crystalline waters, a white sand beach and the low odds that a hurricane would hit the weekend of their wedding, they took a gamble. Hurricane Irma hit the island three weeks before the wedding. At first, the couple relied on the Beaches fan page for updates as they fielded “nonstop” calls from friends and family trying to figure out if the wedding would go on as planned. “It was like having a second full-time job,” said Ms. Christian, 28, a premium sales manager for the Minnesota United Football Club.

The couple relaxed when the resort announced that they would remain closed until Sept. 21, reopening just in time for their wedding. But a week later, Beaches amended the original statement, saying they would be closed through December 2017. Ms. Christian and Mr. Benedict began scrambling.

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It was Turks and Caicos or bust for Brittany Christian and Marcus Benedict.CreditBrilliant Studios

The resort had already notified the couple that they could rebook at another Beaches property, and they’d nearly settled on the Bahamas, even planning the time and place of the ceremony and picking the food all over again, when a second hurricane, Maria, picked up strength in the Caribbean, making that resort less of a sure thing, too. Plus, they wanted their wedding in Turks and Caicos. As luck would have it, an executive at the Shore Club, a luxury boutique resort in the Turks and Caicos, contacted them. He’d heard their wedding was in limbo and offered to personally help them reschedule it at the luxury boutique resort, even discounting some rates. But after a few days of planning — the time and place of the ceremony, what they’d serve at the wedding — it became clear the property was just too expensive.

By then, it was Saturday, the wedding was a week away and the couple still didn’t have a venue, or anything to tell guests. “I threw up my hands and started bawling,” Ms. Christian said. “I couldn’t help but wonder: Is this a sign? Are we not supposed to get married?”

That night, while she was working, Mr. Benedict, a director of distribution for Target, called every property in the Turks and Caicos, quickly learning that Seven Stars Resort was open and accepting guests. “It became Turks or bust,” he said.

They negotiated a block of rooms for guests, signing the final contract on Tuesday evening, and at 6 a.m. the next day, they boarded the flight to the island. “If we can get through this,” Mr. Benedict said, “we can get through anything.”

The Risks of an Outdoor Wedding

When Sasha Garfield, 30, and her fiancé, Colin McDonald, 31, who live in Newport, R.I., scheduled their wedding on the remote island of Cuttyhunk, a 1.5-mile spit of land off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, they never dreamed that the place where Ms. Garfield spent her placid summers growing up would end up in the path of a hurricane. But in September, Hurricane Jose, a Category 1 storm, pushed wind and rain bands offshore the week of their wedding. The remnants of the storm were powerful enough to cancel ferries to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

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For Sasha Garfield and Colin McDonald’s wedding on Cuttyhunk, Mass., everything had to be shipped by ferry and the tents had to be moved to the less windy side of the island.CreditVictoria Dosch Photography

The situation proved perilous to Ms. Garfield, a consultant at the Education Advisory Board, a best practice research and technology firm in Washington, and Mr. McDonald, a vice president of Platinum Equity in New York, because everything for the wedding had to be shipped in by ferry – food, drinks, chairs, tables, cutlery, even a tent large enough to accommodate the 155 guests. Lucky for them, wind directions made it possible for most ferries to travel to Cuttyhunk, despite some big rollers, leaving passengers on the deck soaked; two ferries were canceled and those guests bunked up at local hotels on the mainland until the following morning.

The faraway hurricane challenged them in other ways, too. On the morning of the wedding, they had to find a new place for the wedding tent, which may not have withstood the strong winds in its original spot; they set up a new location just few hours before the ceremony. While some brides stress about seating charts, Ms. Garfield says she was more worried about having enough food (and guests) arriving on ferries. Still, the wedding happened on time that Saturday with all 155 guests in attendance, the rain stopping and the sun emerging minutes before the ceremony.

“We always knew having the wedding on Cuttyhunk introduced a lot of risk and variables,” Ms. Garfield said, “but we also knew, no matter what, it would be worth it.”

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